Mapping the Retinal Connectome

The connectome is the map of the connections between each of your neurons. According to Sebabstian Seung it is the connectome, more so than your DNA, that is responsible for the uniqueness of a person. To develop this theory Seung and his lab have recently launched a webapp called EyeWire to allow anyone to take part in charting the connections in the human retina.

To take part you simply explore a 3D section layer by layer coloring in the spaces where the computer algorithm missed. It’s as easy as coloring in between the lines. And as you can see by my score of 0 up above I’m not too good at coloring between the lines.

If you are interested in learning more about the connectome Sebastien has given a wonderful talk on the subject and if you’re interested in delving deeper, a massive amount of data and the tools to process it have been made freely available courtesy of the the Human Connectome Project.